


breathe the name of your saviour

by somebraveapollo



Series: Before Red Cape And Foil [4]
Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Grief/Mourning, M/M, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-04
Updated: 2013-10-04
Packaged: 2017-12-28 08:41:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/990004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somebraveapollo/pseuds/somebraveapollo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nezumi left him with a goodnight kiss, and Shion lay in the dark, waiting to fall asleep, or to wake up from the artificial calm that had settled on him. He listened to his breaths, counted them, put his hands on his chest looking for the beating of his heart.</p><p>He had been dead that morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	breathe the name of your saviour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [egelantier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/egelantier/gifts).



Nezumi had never been as gentle as he was that night - his touches were light and reverent somehow. Shion still felt strange in his body, with sensitive skin and numb muscles, and restlessness in his bones. He let Nezumi touch all of him, listened to his litany of nonsense reassurances without responding. 

Nezumi left him with a goodnight kiss, and Shion lay in the dark, waiting to fall asleep, or to wake up from the artificial calm that had settled on him. He listened to his breaths, counted them, put his hands on his chest looking for the beating of his heart.

He had been dead that morning.

Nezumi had grieved for him. The King had wept for him, the Queen had prayed, their knight had carried his casket and prepared the burial. An innocent man had been tortured and exiled, and then he had begged to be killed for Shion's memory.

Shion got up and walked to the window. He looked at his fingers, pale in the moonlight. He ran his nails across the glass of the windowpane. He imagined lying in that coffin, trying to scratch his way out. What if the spirit had awoken him later, after the burial?

What if the spirit had awoken him earlier? Before Nezumi's heart had time to break, before anyone had been whipped in the name of justice.

 _I'm ungrateful_ , Shion thought, the first clear thought he'd had since his return. _I'm not sufficiently grateful, and I'm angry, and the spirit might take my life just as she'd given it._

And, clear and undeniable, she answered him: _You aren't ungrateful - you have always questioned justice. Everything other than mercy is suspicious in your eyes._

"Please," he said, and his breath left a mist on the window. "Why did I come back? So many others don't."

 _Your life was bought with your lover's patience and a stranger's suffering._ Shion felt something like a caress pass his forehead. _And with your past kindness and future service._

"I don't understand," he whispered.

 _You will remember my name when I need you to,_ she promised. Then her presence was gone, and Shion's room seemed darker, the moonlight now faint and unimportant.

He breathed on the glass, and drew a flower on the white trail of his breath - a crude approximation of the spirit's mark. He watched it fade away, then left to find Nezumi.

He found him in the physician's chambers, where the coffin was set on the floor, gleaming malevolently in the candlelight. Nezumi was sitting beside it and running his fingers along its edges, so lost in thought that he didn't hear Shion approaching. He looked startled and guilty, as though he was caught cheating. Shion knelt softly beside him, and said, "Will you come to bed?"

"I will," Nezumi promised, with a horrible false cheer. "I need to clear my head - I don't want to keep you up with my restlessness."

"No," Shion said, and kissed him against the coffin. "Tell me what you're thinking about, and I will clear your head for you."

But he didn't let Nezumi speak, and instead kissed him mute and breathless, and lay him on the coffin. It was charmed against the wrath of storms and sea battles; it easily bore the weight of them.

Shion undressed, sitting atop of Nezumi, and thought briefly of being stabbed - that scar was now gone entirely. He was relieved that his old scars were unchanged.

Nezumi was still dressed in mourning, and he seemed transfixed. Shion kissed along his brow and let his dark hair loose. It spilled down to the floor - it was time for Shion to cut it again.

He waited and touched as the candles flickered, and finally Nezumi closed his eyes.

"When you died," he said, and his voice was raw and, at last, familiar. "When you died, I wanted to kill everybody. I wanted to watch the city burn."

"You didn't kill anybody," Shion said, a reminder rather than a question.

"No," Nezumi agreed. "I thought it would displease you."

"But I was dead."

"Well, yes, I didn't want you to be displeased in addition to that."

Shion laughed, and bent forward, laying on his lover's chest. "Thank you," he whispered, and that was when Nezumi finally exhaled. "Thank you, you did well, thank you."

After that, they didn't speak of serious things, only endearments and rough frenzied instructions. Shion whispered "I'm here" once, and Nezumi whispered back, "I know." There was nothing gentle about them now, and they banished all the numbness, along with the grief.

They were intertwined when they came back to their room, joking about being tired as the grave. The moonlight was gone, but the dawn was approaching, and this time Shion welcomed Nezumi's goodnight kiss with a smile.


End file.
